Hearing of the House Committee on the Judiciary- Jena 6 and the Role of Federal Intervention in Hate Crimes and Race-Related Violence in Public School

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Hearing of the House Committee on the Judiciary- Jena 6 and the Role of Federal Intervention in Hate Crimes and Race-Related Violence in Public School

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REP. MAXINE WATERS (D-CA): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Let me first thank you for holding this hearing. It is unusual that we can get hearings calendared as quickly as this was done. And we were only able to do this because you're the chair of this committee. And if we had to have a hearing at this time about this issue, there could be no better person than you, whose life has been dedicated to civil rights in this country. So I'm very pleased that you're at the helm and that you're leading this hearing today.

Yes, Mr. Chairman, I did travel to Jena. And I traveled to Jena because this particular Jena 6 case triggered in me a sign of danger. I had the same feeling when this became known, what was going on there, that I had when we experienced the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles, the same feeling when we watched the people outside of the convention center in New Orleans after Katrina, the same feeling as we witnessed what happened in the town of Tulia, Texas when the whole town practically was indicted on false charges.

There are certain cases that you know must be dealt with, because if you do not deal with them, not only is great harm going to come to the individuals involved, but a message is being sent that this is what can happen if the public policymakers, the civil rights leaders and others are not paying attention. If you don't move at the particular time that these cases raise their ugly heads, then what you're going to see is a proliferation, because prosecutors and DAs who abuse their power will think that they can get away with doing that and nothing will happen.

And so I went to Jena to join with all of the thousands, maybe 50,000 other folks who went there, to send a message that we're here, that something wrong has happened here. We're not going to allow it to continue without addressing it. And so today is part of the response to that issue.

I am concerned, Mr. Chairman, about several things related to this case. Number one, what is the responsibility of the school and the school administrators in handling racial incidents, not only in the South but anywhere in this country?

I'm concerned about the equal-punishment argument. I'm concerned about why it appears in this case young black men were treated more harshly than the whites. I'm concerned about why many cases that occur in the schools are now ending up in the criminal justice system.

This is not the only one that we're experiencing. More and more we're hearing about kindergarten children in handcuffs being taken to jail. We're hearing about teenagers being taken out of school and taken into jail. And we really do have to figure out the responsibility of the school system and why the criminal justice system is getting involved.

We also have to be concerned about the unbridled power of DAs and prosecuting attorneys. And in this case, we must very well be concerned about District Attorney Reid Walters when he addressed the Jena High School students in an assembly last fall and the reported statement that "If the protests at the schools do not stop, with the stroke of my pen I can make your lives disappear." And he almost did that. And those lives of those six perhaps would have disappeared had the nation not gotten involved.

I'm concerned about towns where you have total all-white power, where everybody in the town in a power position is white, and you have these young black folks, young black males in particular, who are going up against district attorneys and juries, all-white, without any blacks being involved.

And I'm concerned about hate crimes and the definition of hate crimes, and now not only the nooses that were hung over the tree on the high school campus, but now nooses that are showing up all over the country in some kind of effort to send a message.

We have a response from the U.S. Department of Justice that we have contacted, and they said they're investigating cases now in Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and other places that we're hearing about.

So I suspect that --

REP. CONYERS: Okay --

REP. WATERS: -- despite the fact that we thought we had addressed these civil rights issues, we have to start all over again, Mr. Chairman. And I appreciate your leadership.

I yield back.

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REP. MAXINE WATERS (D-CA): Thank very much, Mr. Chairman. I have to thank you again for calling this hearing so quickly, and while I know that you're a very thoughtful, careful and deliberate chair taking all things into consideration, I am disappointed that District Attorney Reed Walters is not before us today. That's who I wanted. (Applause.) Also --

REP. CONYERS: As you know, he was invited.

REP. WATERS: Yes. And -- I'm sorry, you did indicate that and I don't know, Mr. Chairman, whether or not there will be more hearings and, perhaps, you will determine that sometimes later. But of course we do know you do have the power of the subpoena. So perhaps that's something we could look toward for the future.

Let me just, if I may, go back to Mr. Washington. Mr. Washington, I first met you when you appeared on television speaking about the Jena Six. If I recall, what you said at that time was that it had been determined that no hate crime had been committed. Is that true? Is that what you said on television?

MR. WASHINGTON: That the -- that there was no hate crime committed at what stage? The December the 4th incident or at some other stage of these -- of the timeline?

REP. WATERS: Do you remember when you were on television making the statement?

MR. WASHINGTON: I do.

REP. WALTERS: What were you referring to?

MR. WASHINGTON: It depends on what the question was. If she was talking about the December the 4th incident, I have been, I think, fairly, fairly clear that I did not believe that that was a hate crime because of the statements that I've read and the information contained in those statements. With the respect to the August 31st hanging of the nooses, the September the 1st incident, I think we've been fairly clear that that had all the elements of a hate crime. What we're missing there, of course -- if we were to proceed forward -- would be evidence and an adult to move forward with. It's not that at the end of the day, that is not -- whether or not it's a hate crime -- the noose hangings --

REP. WATERS: Well, that's really what I'm referring to and what I thought I saw you speaking to on television.

MR. WASHINGTON: Well --

REP. WATERS: Where you had determined that it was not a hate crime.

MR. WASHINGTON: No. There were a number -- no, ma'am. There were --

REP. WATERS: That's not what you said on TV.

MR. WASHINGTON: No, ma'am --

REP. WATERS: All right, that's good. That's fine.

To the -- Ms. Lisa Krigsten, counsel to the assistant attorney general, in your investigation, have you taken into consideration what has been alluded to several times here? Reed Walters attempted to try Michael Bell as an adult. There was no law in the state of Louisiana that would have allowed him to try him as an adult, as I understand it. Was he attempting to try him as an adult for attempted murder or for aggravated battery? Which was it?

MS. KRIGSTEN: I can't speak for what Mr. Walters was attempting to do. But I can --

REP. WATERS: Well, yes, you can. You know what he was -- that's on the record.

MS. KRIGSTEN: When --

REP. WATERS: He attempted to try him as an adult. What was the charge at the time?

MS. KRIGSTEN: Yes. I believe the charge was attempted murder.

REP. WATERS: Attempted murder.

MS. KRIGSTEN: Yes, ma'am.

REP. WATERS: Does the state of Louisiana allow for the trying of juveniles as adults for attempted murder?

MS. KRIGSTEN: It is my understanding -- and again, I'm not a --

REP. WATERS: Well, you should know by now.

MS. KRIGSTEN: I'm not a lawyer who's ever practiced in Louisiana, so let me qualify my answer --

REP. WATERS: That's okay. You should know by now. What is it?

MS. KRIGSTEN: It's my understanding based on Louisiana law that a juvenile can be transferred into the adult criminal justice system with a charge such as attempted murder.

REP. WATERS: So you do not see that the trying of Michael Bell as an adult was something, as it has been described here, as something that was being done for the first time, that it was unusual, and that this should be considered in the investigation of how the district attorney has used or abused his power?

MS. KRIGSTEN: Obviously we are considering everything we know about this. I'm not aware of the allegation that this was the first time that it had been done. Obviously we are still gathering information. And we are going to take everything we learn about this incident into our consideration of how we proceed.

REP. WATERS: Thank you. Have you started to look at the reported threats to all of the Jena 6 and some reference to them and their addresses on the Internet and a charge to go pull them out of their houses?

MS. KRIGSTEN: We have heard about those threats. The FBI takes these sorts of threats very seriously. There is an open investigation into many incidents surrounding Jena, including some of the threats that we have learned about. The FBI is aggressively investigating all of those allegations. The United States attorney's office is working with the Civil Rights Division.

And again, I cannot emphasize enough how seriously we take these incidents. And if we find that there is a prosecutable violation of federal law, we certainly will seek to do the appropriate action.

REP. WATERS: Mr. Ogletree, could you illuminate the discussion on the trying of Michael Bell as an adult and the history of that, as you know it and understand it?

MR. OGLETREE: Yes. And with the permission of the chair of the committee, I'd like to have entered into the record the decision of the state of Louisiana Court of Appeals Third Circuit on September 14th, 2007, where it concluded --

REP. CONYERS: Without objection, so ordered.

MR. OGLETREE: -- that Michael Bell should not have been charged with aggravated battery as an adult and reversed that conviction. So the record is clear. The Louisiana Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit made that determination, and it was clear that he was overcharged, that the lawyer who represented him didn't try to prevent that from happening. That was the original charge.

But the court didn't grant a dismissal of the charges as the lawyers had requested, and only when it went to the Appeals Court was it finally rectified. So the error occurred from the time Michael Bell was charged and wasn't corrected until, gosh, a year after the charges. The record on that is absolutely clear. And I hope that we can submit the rest of the material as well.

REP. WATERS: Thank you very much.

Mr. Chairman, as I close, let me just say that for those of you who are here today, you must recognize that the problem that we're dealing with is not simply in Jena. If you take a look at what has happened on this committee today, first of all, the opposite side of the aisle is missing for the most part. And those who came in, Mr. Lungren and Mr. King, were concerned about Justin Barker. They came in asking questions about Justin Barker and even saying that perhaps we should take the hanging of the nooses lightly, and someday we'll be able to maybe kind of look back at this and not think it's so serious.

So I want you to understand that, because just as we're talking about what is wrong in this country, the institutionalized racism that leads us to this point, it is not only institutionalized racism that causes the desperate treatment such as in this case, but it's the kind of thinking that goes on in this country by public policymakers.

We see things differently. We're here talking about a case of six young black men who obviously have been treated differently. We're talking about a district attorney or a prosecuting attorney who appears to have abused his power. We're talking about nooses that have been hung over trees. And we have those who come in today who are talking about single-parent families and the fact that perhaps more criminality comes out of single-parent families and talking about perhaps Justin Barker's civil rights were violated. That's how they see it. We see it differently.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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